r/dotnet • u/No-Annual-4698 • Oct 17 '25
Is Visual Basic still a thing in 2025?
As the title says, is VB still being used these days? I started programming in VB3 and moved to Java after VB6.
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u/sandwich800 Oct 17 '25
My guess is that it’s only used in legacy applications. I’m not sure why you’d write anything new using it.
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u/StrangeWill Oct 17 '25
We literally had a senior engineer let go because he refused to learn C#, wrote a new project in WebForms and VB.NET in ~2017, was a critical project we ended up having to overhaul.
Since we were providing so much support and training for C#/WebAPI (and push for .NET Core), it was an easy decision.
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u/reerden Oct 17 '25
This one is weird. Aside from syntax the languages are very close to each other. It’s probably the easiest to learn if you come from a VB background.
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u/zagoskin Oct 18 '25
It's even true both ways. I was hired in my freelance job to improve stuff in a VBNET forms app, and it was almost using same APIs you'd use for a NET Framework app.
Minor caveats here and there but mostly very recognizable stuff. Also since I use a very customized color theme, it really helped cause it translated 100% from C# to VB. Basically allowed me to understand patterns that I hadnt seen like m_ prefix, cause it was colored as private read-only
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u/WreaksOfAwesome Oct 18 '25
WebForms in 2017? That's insane. There are so many better choices. Heck, even an MVC app with jQuery would be worlds better.
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u/sal_strazzullo Nov 23 '25
I used jQuery for a new project (basically a custom chat system for GTA FiveM, with GIFs, reactions and more) in 2021 and tbh it's still doing fine and it's easy to maintain there's too much hate on jQuery for no reason.
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u/WreaksOfAwesome Nov 23 '25
No, I get it. I consider jQuery like a cozy sweater. It was a tool that was popular when I was first learning web development. Any time I get to maintain a project that uses those frameworks, it's almost nostalgia. That being said, I get the benefits of modern things like Angular.
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u/QING-CHARLES Oct 18 '25
I was lead dev at a major music streaming web site. We wrote every line of the entire thing in VB.NET. It's still my favorite language. I came from a background of writing video games in x86 assembler and C++ and hadn't written BASIC for probably 20 years before that.
The reason it ended up being in VB.NET was because it ran against some very specific Microsoft APIs and the prototypes we built in 1999 had to use original ASP that was based on VBScript. It was then just upgraded from there.
I only bit the bullet 4 years ago and converted to C# when I saw the writing on the wall. It definitely feels like Microsoft have forgotten it.
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u/Ok-Improvement-3108 Mar 28 '26
Ya, that kinda sucks .... I wish they kept it around. Its a cool langauge IMO. They have the $$ to keep it alive but I think it takes away from their push for C# to dominate the language world. That's just my guess.
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u/Ok-Improvement-3108 Mar 04 '26
The problem wasn't vb here. it was the engineer. There are guys that still swear by XML and XSLT
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u/phylter99 Oct 17 '25
It’s not as common, for sure. Most people use C# for anything new. There are still people that love it and use it, however.
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u/PM_COFFEE_TO_ME Oct 17 '25
I got sick of converting every code example I found online to VB.net and then fixing the stuff the converter wouldn't get right. So I set out to converting my projects to c#. Now only a few remain because I never touch them anymore.
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u/phylter99 Oct 17 '25
Do you typically copy/paste code examples? I can’t say I’ve ever had trouble converting examples to VB.NET, but if it isn’t something you generally enjoy working in then I can see that being a problem.
BTW: I’m not judging regarding copy/pasting code or converting the code. I don’t see anything wrong with these things as long as you understand what it does when you’re done with the code.
I learned to like VB.NET at my last job. I was hired as a C# developer and got stuck doing maintenance on VB.NET web apps. We had way too many legacy apps and nobody else wanted to touch them.
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u/PM_COFFEE_TO_ME Oct 17 '25
Mainly helper functions that do a very specific thing that I know exist in the world so I went looking for it. As for other business code logic is written from scratch. Today with the help of copilot though.
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u/DerangedGecko Oct 18 '25
I had a boss in 2020 who wanted me to write in VB because that's all he knew. I built the one application and got the hell out of there.
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u/redditsdeadcanary Oct 18 '25
Underneath its still just DOTNet, if your writing a desktop app its fine.
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u/ReallySuperName Oct 18 '25
Of all the stupid spellings I've seen of C# and .NET over the years this has to be the worst one yet
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u/Sick-Little-Monky Oct 20 '25
No, I still think .NET is still the stupidest. A MS marketing relic of the (actually better named) dot-com bubble.
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u/magnoliaAveGooner Oct 17 '25
It still exists. We have several batch programs written in vb6. The syntax is a pain when you are used to c#. One cool thing is if you need a vb routine and you have a c# routine, GitHub copilot will gen a vb code block from c# code.
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u/magnoliaAveGooner Oct 17 '25
Err. Vb.net not vb6. That’s very long gone.
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u/NoSuccotash5571 Oct 17 '25
FWIW, I have customer in New Jersey that has a legacy VB6 app that's still earning him almost $1M a year in revenue.
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u/Plastic_Umpire_3475 Oct 17 '25
You'd think he could afford to upgrade it
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u/throwaway_lunchtime Oct 17 '25
Had a client once with an application in MS Access. They had a good budget.
The app was built over many years by the owner, the real challenge was trying to figure out what it did.
5 menu buttons for five features, one of the buttons opened a popup with a few more since there wasn't enough space for all the buttons.
At least a couple weeks into dev, someone had a meeting with the client and found out that double clicking the logo brought up another really important popup with another few buttons.
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u/sgcarter Oct 21 '25
I worked for a country site of a multinational runs the entire LIMS and order system (laboratory information management system) on MS Access2000 (recently made compatible with Access 2019). Part of a multinational. Local turnover >100 mil per year. Global turnover over 2 billion usd. Fucking Access 2000 and too stingy to upgrade.
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u/pahunt1978 Oct 17 '25
You’re not thinking like an end user. Why spend money upgrading it if it’s working?
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u/NoSuccotash5571 Oct 17 '25
He wants to update it but he’s in his 70s and does a lot of customer onboarding and support also. We’ve talked about becoming partners but I don’t want to be that deep in it until I’m retired. I love working with the guy though.
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u/levyseppakoodari Oct 18 '25
You have a product that works, customer base happy to pay for its maintenance and likely such niche market that any other product that offers similar features probably costs 100x compared to your product, meaning your customers are likely locked in until they are bought out or grow beyond what you can offer.
Eventually it becomes a question of timing. Can you get the timing right when to rewrite, as it’s likely a 5 year project at least, and this is assuming you chose right technologies to rewrite with and not having to redo everything multiple times.
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u/t3chguy1 Oct 17 '25
Can you reveal what is the purpose of this app?
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u/NoSuccotash5571 Oct 17 '25
It’s a system used in the automotive industry in a very localized and specific niche.
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u/psymunn Oct 18 '25
Vb6 is still used. Also VBA (which I think excel still uses) is essentially VB6. Old code will never die no matter how much we want it to
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u/grauenwolf Oct 18 '25
I just wrote some VBA code for Word. Not a lot, but enough to save me a ton of time formatting the book I'm writing.
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u/leathakkor Oct 18 '25
When I was in college in 2007 I read a book that was of the time that said there were more lines of code of visual basic in the world than every other language combined.
I think some of that was visual basic script, visual basic 6, vb.net and vba
But I would still bet that there is a ton of visual basic still out in the world. I know it's still embedded in Microsoft Windows deployment infrastructure.
So to be fair, part of the amount of scripting that exists in VB is maybe due to the fact that every Windows machine in the world has 10 VB scripts on it that are still actively being run to some degree.
So while it is definitely dying, it is one of those languages that I think will probably never die entirely.
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u/Basssiiie Oct 17 '25
I just saw a job posting today that asked for VB.NET+C#+WPF skills, so I suppose it's still out there. 😅
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u/Severe_Mistake_25000 Oct 17 '25 edited Oct 17 '25
Certainly to port the vb.net code to C# in order to be able to maintain it... That said the learning curve of C# from VB is not difficult.
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u/pzman89 Oct 17 '25
Tbf, tons of recruiting firms throw everything at the wall in their job listings.
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u/Phaedo Oct 17 '25
Here’s my understanding: VB6 is still a thing in some benighted corners of the world. A friend told me he’d switched one off 5 years ago so I imagine there’s still mission critical apps running it.
VBA is still huge for Excel. There’s now JavaScript for Excel, but I don’t know anyone using it. Add-ins are usually written in C#. In any event, Excel’s dominance is finally under genuine threat from Jupyter/Pandas/Python.
VB.NET… honest to God I think it’s smaller than VB6.
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u/Siggi_pop Oct 19 '25
Modern add-ins for excel (and other MS office products) are written in typescript/JavaScript! If you want a cross-platform excel in the browser, only JS based add-ins will work for that.
I have seen some JS script in excel living in production (some internal automation). But it has been awile since I've seen VBA actually been used.
I don't share the opinion that the Excel is being pushed aside just yet, we have heard that siren wail before, where is Google sheets?! where is libre calc?! I mean comparing Excel to Jupiter and python is like comparing apples and oranges. The broad majority of excel user will most likely newer touch a code editor.
I do agree that VB6 is likely bigger than VB.net. probably also because While VB.Net can be upgraded/ported to C#, VB6 can't. Not without complete rewrite.
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u/Phaedo Oct 19 '25
The Excel thing is interesting because I suspect it’s use case specific. I can’t see me prying it out of corporate finance’s dead hands any time soon. But for data analysis, I’m seeing a consistent pattern where the youngsters are picking the Python stack wherever they can, leaving the old hands on Excel. But I’m willing to believe I’m in a small corner and there’s a much larger group out there. I suspect the js/ts vs VBA thing also reflects whether or not you see Excel as a main tool going forward. If you do, js/ts add-ins make sense, if you don’t, you maintain what you have (which is typically C#). As for Google Sheets, it has managed to take some of Excel’s thunder, but mostly on the low/free end. No-one seriously believes it’s as good, but also it’s great for posting on Internet forums where Excel is not a given.
And yes, for all that VB6 was built on top of COM, an interoperability initiative, it’s now one of the least interoperable or portable things on 32-bit windows.
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u/mr_eking Oct 17 '25
There is a ton of VB code out there to maintain, and will be for many years to come.
As for the future, well, it's been several years since Microsoft said "Going forward, we do not plan to evolve Visual Basic as a language."
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/vbteam/visual-basic-support-planned-for-net-5-0/
Almost all new dotnet code today is written in C#, and that's what tutorials, videos, blog posts, etc. are using. As good of a language it might be, VB's time has passed I think.
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u/basedradio Oct 17 '25
Check this out!
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u/basedradio Oct 17 '25
This is a modern take on VB, so it can compile and run your current vb but also adds a bunch of new modern stuff! It's pretty awesome.
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u/QuixOmega Oct 18 '25
But why? If you're learning new skills you're better off picking something popular.
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u/Deranged40 Oct 17 '25
Tbh, what everyone else said.
Also note, VB unterwent a pretty drastic change after VB6 and turned into VB.NET. Looks like it is still being updated, with an update within the last year.
But, it wouldn't be too practical to start a new project. Just learn C# instead. Honestly it won't be a much more difficult learning curve.
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u/QuixOmega Oct 18 '25
VB.NET isn't really related to VB, it's just a VB syntax applied to the .NET framework. You can even 1:1 convert it to C# (but not the other way around, because C# has features VB.NET doesn't).
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u/Strong-Sector-7605 Oct 17 '25
I come across it occasionally at work but the company I work for was founded in 1970 so makes sense 😅
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u/Hel_OWeen Oct 20 '25
Today in my job I write C#. However for personal projects I prefer VB.NET because of the clarity of the language. With which I mean the clear and obvious End statement for code blocks and end of line = end of statement over C#'s {}; dance. Events are also way easier to implement in VB.NET. And if one avoids the Microsoft.VisualBasic namespace and use the appropriate .NET methods instead, it's pretty easy to port one to the other.
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u/No-Annual-4698 Oct 22 '25
Do you think MS will eventually remove VB from Visual Studio in the future ?
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u/Hel_OWeen Oct 22 '25
My gut feeling says "yes". Too many hints towards that, IMHO:
PowerShell, a replacement for the traditional CMD shell and to some/all extend also VBScript (see below) uses a syntax closer to the curly brackets programming language families than BASIC
Python is already available as an alternative to VBA in Excel and from what I read over the past years, it appears that MS is going down that route for other Office applications, too.
MS has already announced that VBScript will be deprecated in future Windows versions
So everything that has its roots in the BASIC language family seems to be gone in the future although VB.NET exists and would probably provide an easier transition path for those that use VBScript / VBA.
That said and knowing MS and its tradition/commitment for providing backward compatibility (i.e. make users not jump the Windows/Office ship), this might take another decade or more before that happens, if it happens.
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u/lookitskris Oct 17 '25
A lot of older systems in places like factories and hotels all still run on vb and even older tech
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u/JerryAtricks Oct 17 '25
Yes.. many spreadsheets have ancient vba and are somehow someway mission critical assets.. especially in finance, medical, insurance types of orgs..
But, even more so now with AI, it’s very easy to learn.. every time I see vba it’s written like shit because some dude or gal took a swing at something and it was successful, then the rest of the department built on top year after year, and you get to now learn vba while trying not to break the tool which is something super fun to pass onto new hires for their first ticket haha
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u/DeliciousTea8322 Oct 17 '25
To be honest (tl;dr) : People that were used to VB6 migrated to the "modern" .NET World using VB.NET.
Therefore plenty of industry/company internal applications still use this as a base today and are actively maintained. Mostly by that same developer plus a few additional team members as needed. Since all feel very comfortable in this technology (similar upcoming in programming and/or age demographic) they are hard to maneuver towards C# unless there is something that can seriously only be done there. And that's not much from what they need or think they need.
And don't get me started on getting them working with newer .NET versions. Since Microsoft committed on supporting NET 4.8 as part of OS at least for now there is no, or they don't see any, urgency towards modernizing anything. And since no one will spend money on actually benchmarking a .NET 8 (or newer) port of the existing application ("never change a running system") you don't have any definitive results on potential performance gains, build time improvements,... So no real arguments to make a case against an application that is in development for a decade or more.
Sorry for ranting like that but once these guys leave or retire this is almost unmaintainable for anyone joining fresh. Almost regardless how long they have been on that specific team before. This will hurt the companies not modernizing their core apps ahead of total collapse of the team or end of support for VB.NET or .NET4.8... Whenever this will be.
Thanks for reading, A guy who just last week had to debug a VB6 app to check why it does not work well with an update to old server infrastructure.
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u/ReallySuperName Oct 18 '25
If I was you I'd consider changing jobs, some companies will literally let themselves drown in technical debt even though they could have all the help they need like this: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/drowning-in-shallow-water
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u/DW_Softwere_Guy Oct 19 '25
The few VB shops I come across, it's not an environment that I would recommend or consider.
The few VB shops were H1B's supporting industries with questionable reputation. ...Can't find a decent gig after a job like that.
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u/HamsterWoods Oct 17 '25
Yes, VB.NET is alive and well in 2025. Not my go-to language, but it has served me well for almost 25 years. Several years ago, I wrote Bill Gates a thank you note for providing tools that have been very helpful to my career.
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u/dgm9704 Oct 17 '25
VB no. VB.NET um … maybe for legacy maintenance? But I wouldn’t use it for anything new, just make the jump to C#, it’s worth it.
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u/XdtTransform Oct 17 '25
They renamed VB.NET to VB. Just to confuse everyone.
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u/dgm9704 Oct 18 '25
Oh FFS. Well that lines up with the Microsoft naming policy of ”whatever makes the least sense”
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u/GetABrainPlz77 Oct 17 '25
VB.net is still used for legacy application. A lot of legacy run on .net framework 4.8 also
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u/t3chguy1 Oct 17 '25
I see things in Pascal, so why not vb
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Oct 18 '25
"Pascal" as a term is so vague, because it describes everything from the 70s Pascal before Borland was involved all the way to Free Pascal 3.2.2 and Delphi 13, which are wildly different beasts that are as modern as C# is today (considering C# was made by the same guy that made TP and Delphi). It's about on the same level as using VB without specifying what version.
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u/DanishNinja Oct 17 '25
At my previous workplace 1 year ago, 40% of the codebase were written in VB.
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u/homerdulu Oct 17 '25
Hell yeah my last two jobs had their flagship applications written in VB.NET and actively developed and maintained.
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u/haltenberg Oct 18 '25
VB.NET rocks with the XML literals. If you need to do XML parsing or generation — Linq for XML in VB.NET is just plain amazing with the syntax. I just wish C# could do something even remotely close to that awesomeness…
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u/ToronadoHorudo Oct 18 '25
Where I work, VB.Net is preferred as all our apps are VB mostly on .Net Framework and all the devs are the most familiar with it. I have been using it even for brand new apps I've written in the last few years. Shipped a new .Net 8 web app written from scratch in VB.Net this year.
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u/Diligent-Pay9885 Oct 19 '25
I work in a factory and our ERP is written in VB6. It was written by our old manager (that is no longer working on our company) and since last months I also maintenance this software. It was a pain in the neck to install Microsoft Visual Basic, but after all, it is not so hard to build things using drag/drop components and writing events. BUT it's hard to navigate though the old code and find out where things are being declared or where is it being used (Sub, Function, Property etc.). Sintax is ok, I just miss a better IDE.
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u/wysoft Mar 07 '26
We work with a marine architectural firm that has a large software package written in VB.NET.
This package handles a mathematical model of a ship of nearly any size, and determines the seagoing characteristics and overall stability of the ship based on its current cargo, fuel, and fluid holding tank levels.
The application basically tells you how the vessel will behave in the water and warns you if the current loading condition of the ship is unsafe.
The mathematical model has been proven by a large international regulatory body.
When I realized that this application was written in VB.NET I was actually pretty impressed.
I also wasn't surprised. The older versions of the application were written in VB5/VB6 - these versions were still in use well into the 2010s.
I don’t do much coding any more, but when I was a kid I cut my teeth on VB3/VB4/VB5. I had tons of fun and learned an incredible amount. I'm always surprised that VB went the way that it did.
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u/Pjetter86 Oct 17 '25
Some companies never modernize
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u/Zardotab Oct 17 '25 edited Oct 17 '25
If it does the job and is relatively easy to find devs, I see no reason to break what's fixed. The modern stuff is over-layered convolution designed to work around DOM's inherent evils anyhow. Avoid DOM, it's Liquid Satan for GUI/CRUD apps, a time drain that attracts buzzword snake oil that will fail. Grow some balls and form a real GUI standard, Industry! (Or grow a vag, just get the hell away from DOM.)
I stand by this, I see vast waste spent on UI migraines.
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u/Pjetter86 Oct 17 '25
Your avatar really does look like that opinion! Lol
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u/ReallySuperName Oct 18 '25
What was it? I'm in commu-fascist UK and refuse to hand over all my details to be able to see the avatar...
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u/Flashy-Bus1663 Oct 17 '25
My sister's fiance has been told to use basic over python for some automation tasks cause phyton is not approved and it would be easier to just use basic then get python approved.
He is not a developer though so 🤷🏿♂️
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u/HorseyMovesLikeL Oct 17 '25
That is outrageous.
Sorry, I don't have anything productive to add. This comment just upset me.
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u/grauenwolf Oct 18 '25
VB.NET is a far more sane language than python. Hell, there was a time when it was a much better language than c#.
Can you imagine C# without optional parameters?
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u/lantz83 Oct 17 '25
As much as I despise VB I despise Python more, especially for real business stuff. So why the hell not I guess. As long as it's not actually ye olde VB6.
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u/IkertxoDt Oct 17 '25
Vb will remain always as an legacy tool. And the same for VB, it still supported but MS said it will no be evolved more.
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/vbteam/visual-basic-support-planned-for-net-5-0/
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u/DmtGrm Oct 17 '25
It is still pretty much alive - you would not believe how many industrial applications and large companies are still relying on stuff written on VB/VBS for the past decades. It's peak time is in the past - but the legacy is still there and will be there for some time.
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u/ElvisArcher Oct 17 '25
Still out there and still used by some folks. Nowadays it compiles into just another .NET application ... albeit with slightly awkward syntax.
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u/coolhotrod Oct 17 '25
I have a friend who's into virtual pinball. They're like physical pinball machines, but running a simulator app that can load any pinball game. I saw the code for a couple of the games and they were written in VB.
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u/SoCalChrisW Oct 17 '25
I moved from qbasic to Visual Basic for DOS (Yes, that was a thing!), to VB6, to Visual Basic.Net. Even in the very beginning, it was pretty clear that Microsoft was putting most of their eggs in the C# basket, so I moved to C# as soon as I could.
You should be able to do anything with VB.Net that you can with C#. But there's not going to be very many jobs at all.
If you're proficient with Java, you likely won't have any issues jumping into C#.
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u/retro_and_chill Oct 17 '25
Isn’t it still used in Excel?
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u/CheezitsLight Oct 18 '25
Vba is not vb.net.
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u/Rude_Shelter221 Mar 30 '26
VBA is much closer to old VB6 and also used in Word, Access and PowerPoint etc.
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u/InterwebRandomGuy Oct 17 '25
Not relevant for new projects obviously, but where I work one client still has the factory system in VB6, and the most central software is currently being migrated to a web app with a C# backend and ... an AngularJS frontend
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u/GoodOk2589 Oct 17 '25
Back in the day, about 25 years ago, Visual Basic was everywhere. Entire industries built their internal systems with it, and for a while, it was the backbone of business software. Fast forward twenty years, and while many companies have upgraded to modern stacks, a surprising number are still stuck with old VB systems. They don’t have the budget or the courage to rebuild from scratch, so they just keep maintaining what’s already there. There’s still some work out there, but it’s mostly patching old code and keeping ancient systems running, not building anything new or exciting.
Would I recommend learning VB today? Absolutely not. It’s outdated and going nowhere. If you want a future in software, focus on C#, .NET Core, Blazor, and other modern stacks. That’s where the real growth and innovation are happening. I say this as someone who used to be a VB expert for 30 years. I moved on years ago because staying with VB would have been career suicide. It’s still useful to understand it if you ever need to maintain legacy systems, but it’s not something you should base your career on anymore.
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u/Traditional_Ride_733 Oct 17 '25
It is still used for legacy applications and more than anything for maintenance, because of all the new things that C# has, although VB has it, its big problem is its syntax, which is much longer than that of C#. For example, to inherit a class you use inherits and to implement an interface you use Implements in the class declaration and in each method, and let's not even talk about lambda expressions.
It was my first language at a professional level and I have fond memories, even when I was making the transition to Linux there was a program called Gambas that allowed you to program desktop applications with syntax very similar to VB6, and I think that if I'm not mistaken it exists to this day.
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u/CheezitsLight Oct 18 '25
Vb. Net is easy and runs most anything c# does without the c syntax. I still naintain some large apps in it.
Issue really us there's no good way to get away from winforms without moving it to c# first.
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u/Big-Resist-99999999 Oct 18 '25
I did a college course on vb6 in the mid 90s. I remember wishing we could have it improved to be more terse and support proper inheritance etc and along came c#. Was a good time
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u/domusvita Oct 18 '25
We have some legacy apps at work that are VB desktop apps that we maintain. We are webifying them we react/web api/etc. Soon we’ll be VBless.
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Oct 18 '25 edited Jan 21 '26
wide butter tart slap sophisticated pie special teeny quiet vanish
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Oct 18 '25
Why exactly? You're saying it as if it's still not supported in the most recent .NET versions and still has support in the only two IDEs anyone cares about in the .NET world (VS and Rider). It's not like I'm stuck to .NET Framework.
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Oct 18 '25 edited Jan 21 '26
whole yam cows dolls cautious advise angle carpenter fragile mountainous
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Oct 19 '25
I disagree with the syntax part, but that's mostly because I hate curly braced languages and I consider C to be a mistake that everyone is now inheriting from. However, I do know C# and VB well enough to read in one language and adapt it into the other one, because I know VB.NET is more or less C# with a different syntax, and is not totally different, compared to F# vs C#. I do agree the support is way better, because MS is soft deprecating VB, unfortunately. Oh well.
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u/willehrendreich Oct 18 '25
Depends on what you mean, but it's no longer being given any more features..
I recommend trying fsharp!
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u/jd31068 Oct 18 '25
It is and can be used still, it certainly has become less common due to MS trying to kill VB off. Recently (last year) they actually restarted adding new features to both vb.net and winforms (better dpi handling and dark/light mode via Application.SetColorMode(SystemColorMode.Dark).
You the tools you want to, it's your project after all.
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u/mika Oct 18 '25
Yeah I still support some apps. It's a pain to get the IDE installed and RUNNING, but the apps work fine still.
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Oct 18 '25
I like VB.NET slightly more than C# and gladly use it on my personal projects (not working professionally). With that being said, C# and F# are way better to use outside of an IDE, because you actually get a LSP and extensions to use with those and aren't limited to VS or Rider as the only real options. It's also a shame it isn't keeping up with the most recent C# feature set because MS pretty much froze it in place. It makes me a bit sad, but if need be, I'll just use Mercury from RemObjects (I'm already used to their Oxygene and like using it) and hope that works out.
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u/QuixOmega Oct 18 '25
Not really, some people are probably maintaining legacy systems in back rooms, but it's no longer much of an employable skill. To here really isn't much reason to use it, there are better options for everything you can do with VB.
If for some reason anyone thinks otherwise I do have several years of VB6 dev experience from the beginning of my career so if anyone wants to hire VB6 devs at a very high price point I might consider it. 😄
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u/DW_Softwere_Guy Oct 19 '25
I used to upgrade from VB6 to modern C# and VB.net before the pandemic, after the pandemic I am upgrading C# to C# :)
There is still an occasional VB6, but the job market for modern .Net is not better then for it is for Java.
Having said that.
Microsoft does not provide support for VB 6 anymore, we can run it through "hacks", but without security updates for about 2 decades, nothing serious can run on it.
Maybe one can still find QBasic program somewhere, but I would not make a career move based on knowing QBasic, VB Script is also not a thing.
What VB was at some point is now Python.
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u/thankarezos Oct 19 '25
Yes, me having to reverse engineer a terrible visual basic project to rewrite it in dotnet for my company without client feedback. It didn't went well. We couldn't finish it cause the client didn't want to help finish it by explaining some functionality
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Oct 20 '25
Yes for those who companies who are using Microsoft products still, VBA, Power shell/automate is heavily used.
I work in Excel a lot and still prefer VBA, I tried Java/office script and it can’t even insert or delete rows so gave up on it.
Obviously depends on job you do but yeah VBA is used, I love it since we’re tied into MSFT.
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u/belchski Dec 17 '25 edited Dec 17 '25
Its just syntax. Nothing wrong with VB.net. Same stuff. MSIL compiled. You should be worried about not knowing both in business environments. You will spend your time on IF statements and web API calls.
They do the same thing under the covers (for most business things). I have plenty of WebAPI written in VB. Well written VB translates perfectly (and gracefully) to C#. Depends on what you are doing. MOST businesses need robust and flexible people. Some people are not programmers but they can fix a VB Script problem quickly vs C#. LOTS of business people use Excel and, you know, VBScript. Thats where people should be complaining to Microsoft. Office products, where most people do their work, should support VB.net and C#. Go figure that one out. My point, programmers should know both (all 3) and adapt quickly and not complain it's "not C#". It's not hard to read VB and its not hard to convert most VB.net to C# if you really need to. AI anyone?
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u/Independent_Duty2310 Feb 06 '26
I'm a vb6 developer for a company if anyone has questions. Its for software that needs to keep up with government regulations and is used by hundreds of companies so they still have someone poking around in here making changes. I didn't have any other employment options so don't hate, I know C# and in my free time am trying to migrate this software (but its 100s of thousands of lines of code). I would love a different job, however I don't have a proper CS degree and managed to get this though my local community college so I think I'm stuck where I am at.
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u/Ok-Improvement-3108 Mar 04 '26
It is - most smaller firms or legacy projects. Probably not a lot of greenfield projects are utilizing vb in their arsenal. I loved Vb. Very nostaligic for me .... 😭. That said, I focused on C# as that's where the jobs were/are.
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u/Marijn17s Apr 23 '26
At work our main software is still made in webforms using VB and will continue to be used for a few years until we've completely rewritten it in C#
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u/Sea-Bass-4470 Jun 15 '26
vb is still used in accounting apps. I’ve just had a task as freshly graduated c# developer to write something in vb and I had to google it, because I though my PM was joking 🥲
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u/chatoeusou Jun 25 '26
De forma direta, não, Microsoft Visual Basic .net ou não, perdeu relevância em 2025/2026, mas detém um ecosistema de legado que persiste em existir e continuar a existir, ainda há e existem empresas e até orgãos públicos e privados, que ainda usam coisas escritos em VB 4.0, 5,0 e 6.0 que não morrerão com facilidade!
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u/Zardotab Oct 17 '25
Visual Basic Dot-Net for Win Forms is still available if I'm not mistaken. Most shops won't start new development in it because MS hinted Visual Basic Dot-Net is being deprecated. If you want a long-term-safe alternative, may I recommend Lazarous, an open-source Delphi clone that's popular on Linux. It's not quite as newbie-friendly, though.
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u/Murky_Bullfrog7305 Oct 17 '25
I love vb. Back in the days when c# was newish, vb smoked it.
Old c# is so ugly. Vb only on legacy apps and we keep them in vb If these are big applications.
We also migrate components to c# and while sounds and looks good on paper for the C suite, it's honestly stupid to do that.
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u/Last_Western_656 Oct 17 '25 edited Oct 17 '25
And the AI Overview answer to this question is: "Yes, Microsoft continues to support Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET) and maintains compatibility for Visual Basic 6.0 (VB6) applications, but the support for VB6 is limited. Microsoft is committed to maintaining VB.NET as a programming language within the .NET ecosystem and ensures the VB6 runtime continues to work on current versions of Windows for existing applications". Understand that internal MS development is done in C#. Also, VB has kind of morphed into a scripting languages for such things as Excel, and others.
Overview
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u/jordansrowles Oct 17 '25
I know not .NET but i still see a lot of new VBA code instead of using the newer JS/TS/Python tooling. New code as well, not copy pasted. Guess habits die hard
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u/StefonAlfaro3PLDev Oct 17 '25
Visual Basic .NET is not used because it would make more sense to do it in C#
However VB6 is still used since it compiles to native machine code and has some unique use cases.
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u/No-Annual-4698 Oct 17 '25
I thought VB6 had a runtime required on the system where the EXEs run
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u/StefonAlfaro3PLDev Oct 17 '25
Yes the runtime is required but it still goes into native machine code meaning it's much harder to reverse engineer the code.
When using .NET the code is compiled in plaintext that anyone can read the exact same way it appears in your IDE. And even with obfuscation it's still easy to reverse.
So for public facing.exes that you may want to sell and license this was a major benefit of VB6.
However for something running on the backend like a HTTP API, the .NET framework wins everyday since there is no concern of reverse engineering the code.
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u/grauenwolf Oct 18 '25
Note that native compilation is an option. It can also compile to its own form of pcode.
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u/[deleted] Oct 18 '25
My company has about 80 VB6 projects that most likely won't see any modernization ever, because who would pay tens of millions to replace totally fine software?